He will be, who he will be

My husband's grandfather has a great saying whenever a baby is born and people make a ruckus about who he/she looks like, he says, "He/She looks like himself/herself." That is true. My child, though he may resemble either my husband or me at any given time, is his own person.


As my son is growing up, I'm continually thinking inside my head how best to raise him. Precisely, how to make him aware of his dual ethnicity. I'm sure it's a challenge by those who are raising biracial children. I want him to feel completely at ease and secure when someone asks him about his ethnicity. In fact, I wonder what he would check if given a form wherein he has to identify either "Caucasian" or "Pacific Islander". He's both, you see. 
 

Food would be the first entry point in introducing him to his Filipino heritage. After all, food is the universal language. And I speak it well :) Yes, he'll eat filipino spaghetti (our version of the classic Italian dish, except we made it sweeter, by adding sugar, and put sliced hot dog pieces in it), pandesal, adobo, sinigang (it's my fave dish), kare kare, lechon, pancit, nilaga, beef steak, and the list goes on and on. Already, we fed him some rice and sopas de bola bola. Boy did he love it!


I plan to have him learn, speak, and understand Tagalog as best he can. Since I don't speak it fluently, I know his grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and cousins who do, will teach him and/or communicate to him in that manner. My Tagalog isn't perfect, but I do understand it and sometimes when I talk to my son, I'll switch from English to Tagalog to expose him to the varied sounds and tones. 

But my Filipino heritage is more than just food and language. We are a culture that focuses on family. We are hard workers (ok, I know some of us are lazy), we respect the home (remove your shoes and use slippers inside the house), and we love dancing (macarena, electric slide, the 'ocho ocho', etc.).  More importantly, we Filipinos know how to par-tay! We make every event a reason to celebrate (spoke your first word, got your first haircut, grew three inches, sure, let's have a get together!)

Apart from that, I have much to share with my son about the struggles I grew up with, everything from being an immigrant and assimilating to a new culture (I didn't even eat a hamburger till a year after my family immigrated to the U.S.  I stuck to McDonald's fries, according to my Dad), to explaining how American cartoons helped me learn English (see there is a good and valid reason as to how TV helps kids), and commiserate about how our culture is full of short people (the one factor I'm hoping I won't pass onto my children).

He'll enjoy the snow-covered winters (hopefully), whether it be on the East coast or up in Tahoe, and he'll see the colorful parols on display during Christmas and get to enjoy the putukan of New Year's in the Philippines. I want my child to have an appreciation for who his parents are and where we came from. After all, despite some obvious cultural differences, my husband and I want the same thing for our biracial child, for him to grow up healthy, smart, and happy.  

I myself am not 100% filipino, I have Spanish and Chinese blood. I know most Filipinos are a mixture of some form of that or other. Unfortunately, there are very few indigenous Filipinos left. My husband is an amalgam of European ancestry. So really, our child is a product of lots of culture, so to speak. More importantly, I hope I can pass onto him the best of my husband and I, regardless of our own ethnicity.